Nick Ainger: Yes, it will. [Interruption.] As I said, there will be 2,100 new places in Wales alone. [Interruption.] Let me run through them. Dental care is establishing practices in Newtown, Brecon, Lampeter, Port Talbot and Swansea. There will be an additional 26,000 NHS places. Integrated Dental Holdings plans new practices in Llanelli, Wrexham and Whitland, where there will be 24,000 extra places. Oasis Healthcare will open eight new surgeries across north Wales, with 80,000 NHS places. There will be new surgeries in Denbigh, Mold, Ewloe, Flint, Rhyl, Caernarvon and Colwyn Bay. That is good news. There will be a comprehensive NHS dental system throughout Wales.

Alan Simpson: No, I do not, and I think that it is a mistake to presume that earnings in the richest part of society are not a zero sum gain. That is one of the great myths that is debunked in the book that I mentioned. It has always been argued that if the superrich are allowed to be superrich, they will somehow engender a dynamic in the economy that will drag everyone else's earnings along with theirs.

Alan Simpson: The hon. Gentleman makes an important point, and Members in all parts of the House who have long campaigned for recognition of the concept of fuel poverty are beginning to understand that water poverty could be no less a threat to the poorest and most vulnerable in our society.
	It is obscene to have such a crisis of affordability and access at a time when the levels of self-reward in these privatised industries have gone through the roof. This is indeed almost a national obscenity, so is indefensible for us, as a Government, not to intervene. We should say, for instance, that water companies can pay no bonuses until they have met the European average for water losses, which is 5 per cent. At present, we are losing almost 25 per cent. of our water supply. Why should we create a market that allows executives to reward themselves, but which cannot deliver a consistent water supply to the public?

Alan Simpson: No, I do not think that that is so at all. Let us consider what this country produces. I go back to a point made from the Conservative Benches. If we want to begin with the question of the creation of wealth, it is fair to say that there are a few dynamic entrepreneurs in the UK who have not only invented things to make, but have gone on to produce them. We ought to consider how to reconnect with support for domestic manufacturing. Many of the countries that are far more successful than we are at that are in that position because they have much more interventionist policies in their markets. There is a presumption that it is not enough to talk about inventions if one does not create the domestic circumstances in which those inventions have markets.
	That is the point that I want to come to on the climate change challenge. One of the big criticisms that we hear from the parts of the manufacturing industry in the UK that are involved in the development of new technologies and sustainable energy systems is that we should look at what is happening in other parts of Europe. The Governments of those countries have created a market in sustainable energy systems and renewable technologies because they have changed the rules and financial subsidies in relation to those markets. Germany is streets ahead of the UK in doing that. It has captured 15 per cent. of the world market in renewable technologies because its firms have a domestic market in which to sell. In Berlin, 80 per cent. of all new buildings that are going up are generating their own energy. Is that just a foible of Berliners? The answer is no. The market rules about buy-back pricing of electricity were changed so that people get back four times the price for energy use, in the context of the cost of energy that they take from the system. Of course, that transforms the way in which energy suppliers begin to look at the energy market.
	I just happen to have completed my own eco-house, which will generate more energy than it consumes and which puts the surplus back into the national grid, but it is a crap deal. For every £1 of energy that I put into the system, it will cost me £7 to get it back. That is the nature of a rigged market. We can change the nature of that market so that there is less sense of theft and a dash for cash in the present and so that we have a market that genuinely invests to deliver in a sustainable way for the future. The rules are not God-given; they are Government-created. One can create competitive markets, but on a different presumption.
	In that sense, when we talk about the need for liberalised markets, I would just point out that, in the UK, in a liberalised market mentality, we are currently paying more for our energy supplies than our European competitors. The best point of comparison is Denmark. In 1970, after the last oil crisis, it looked at the short-term pressures, realised that it needed to come up with long-term solutions and began to invest systematically in decentralised energy systems. It did so knowing what most people in today's UK energy sector know: we have a monumentally inefficient national grid energy supply system. Some 70 per cent. of the energy input is lost in energy production or transmission. In Denmark and the Netherlands, decentralised energy systems, using co-generation techniques of combined heat and power, are 90 to 95 per cent. efficient. Those countries recognised that they could meet their energy needs, and their energy security needs, through decentralised energy systems on the energy that we throw away.
	Why do we not take the opportunity to change the fiscal rules relating to energy markets to allow a paradigm shift, not into the absurdity of a new generation of nuclear power stations or the presumption that we are under some obligation to prop up a grossly inefficient national grid, but in the way we think about energy generation and supply? The Dutch are building roads that incorporate solar power generation so that the energy needs of 400 houses can be met by every new kilometre of motorway. Why are they doing it, but we are not? It is because their Government intervene to structure the market towards renewables rather than short-term consumption or profit generation.

Alan Simpson: That is certainly one measure that could have been used, but not the only one. As has been suggested, we could tie such a provision to exemptions or reductions in council tax, to stamp duty or to licensing for rented houses of multiple occupancy, all of which could be conditional on energy efficiency. However, there is a cost involved. We need to be honest about that and take the cost on the chin now, because the cost of not using energy efficiently will be paid in people's lives. That is the real challenge against which this Budget and future Budgets will increasingly be judged. To what extent will we offer more than lip service to making profound, undermining, changes in energy costs or climate change that affect people's lives or their ability to stay alive? All future Budgets will have to be judged against those criteria.
	I have a final observation about the experience of building my house. It feels morally uplifting to have done that—

Alan Simpson: The architect and I will have lots of fun doing just that.
	One of the things that experience taught me is that there are no individual solutions. My contribution to energy generation would be infinitely more efficient if it could be fed into a decentralised energy system for Nottingham, in which co-generation—the interaction between the energy needs and energy generation of houses, shops and businesses—was part of an integrated whole. We shall achieve that only when fiscal measures make such a shift possible. That is an admission of the limits of the contribution I can claim in lightening the ecological footprint of my existence on the planet. My contribution would be much more significant if my footprint was lightened alongside others and in conjunction with them.
	In budgetary terms, we need to look at the management of markets and the management and deployment of fiscal incentives on energy. Recently, we handed out a public, taxpayer subsidy to clear up the £85 billion waste management costs of the last generation of nuclear power stations. Soon, we shall be asked to believe that there will be no similar costs in future for a subsequent generation. I have to say to the Chancellor, his colleagues and colleagues on both sides of the House that the public, taxpayer subsidy for that next round of follies will run off with the budget for all the interventions that would bring about fundamental change and a sustainable energy system for the UK in the 21st century.